Access to healthful and uncontaminated food should be a human right

Environmental Justice and Access to Healthy Foods: Developing Community-University Partnerships to Address the Built Environment

Access to healthful and uncontaminated food should be a human right and recently researchers, policy makers, and the public have recognized how the built environment impacts residents' health in terms of access to food. The best approaches for addressing this public health problem are still being examined. Since 1993, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has been a leading proponent for community-university partnerships to address environmental public health concerns. Through the environmental justice program, NIEHS has sought to bring together community residents, environmental health researchers and health care providers to examine myriad public health topics, including those related to the built environment. Through these partnerships, community residents have worked in concert with researchers to define, evaluate and develop solutions to environmental health issues facing their communities. In this session four environmental justice projects will be presented, highlighting the strategies each partnership has employed to address disparities in the built environment as it pertains to access to healthful and uncontaminated food. The projects are at differing stages of development and address different aspects of the built environment. Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) is the first and only non-profit environmental law center in Wisconsin. MEA provides legal and technical support to grassroots groups that are working for environmental justice in the Western Great Lakes region. MEA's four primary campaign address the root cause of the most significant environmental problems in the Western Great Lakes region: a power imbalance that allows corporations to pollute water and air resources with impunity. Factory Farm Campaign Factory farms cause air and water pollution by concentrating too much manure on too little land. We support a coalition of family farmers, sports fishers, and environmentalists who are fighting to stop air and water pollution caused by large-scale agriculture. Toxics Campaign Air toxins are a significant environmental justice issue in this region. Toxins emitted from industrial smoke stacks and waste incinerators settle on land and water, move up the food chain, and threaten public health. We provide legal assistance to groups working to reduce toxic emissions and protect the human right to uncontaminated food and water. Government Accountability Campaign We monitor Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources and other agencies that impact the environment. We are vigilantly reminding these agencies who their real "customers" are and providing a counterbalance to corporate influence over agency decisions. Sacred Places Campaign We work to protect unique natural resources and sites sacred to Native Americans. We work to build coalitions between conservationists and Native Americans with the common goal of protecting land and rare resources for future generations.